Chapter 1

"I first saw her when I moved into the community, two years after my wife's death. One morning I sat in my leather rocking chair reading a newspaper, when I heard a creaking sound. Across from my huge white house stood a dilapidated little cottage. I looked onto the porch and saw a woman, a few years younger than I was , walking slowly toward a tattered rocking chair and carefully lowering herself into it.

   " It was as if she felt my gaze upon her, for she looked up and in the instant our eyes met, it was as if a powerful surge of electricity was coursing through my veins to the very core of my being. She gave me a heartwarming smile and I smiled back. Every morning I would sit in my rocking chair and watch as she slowly made her way onto her porch and sit in her own. When she sat comfortably, she would look over at me and smile shyly and of course I would smile back.

"The distance between our houses was not so far as to deter us from making polite conversation, but I could not bring myself to speak to her because we came from two different worlds. I was a rich, widowed octogenarian condoloid and she was a human, a poor, widowed, fragile beauty. I was rich, yet she had everything I could ever want. She had a family who visited her every weekend to take her out and I had an indolent, middle-aged house keeper who came by every day to cook my dinner and wash my clothes.

          "Though we uttered not one solitary word to each other, I would feel at peace just sitting on my porch, watching her as she watched me. As a matter of fact, I would have been content to sit watching her every day even if we never got the chance to speak with each other. I enjoyed seeing her most when her family came to visit, because her eyes would sparkle reminding me of the first time I saw her. Though I dreaded the moment she had to leave, it would warm my heart, for when I looked into her eyes, I would see a hint of sadness as though she was reluctant to leave me.

          "One day, I was surprised to see her on her porch looking longingly at my chair, as soon as I sat in it, she diverted her gaze and looked into the vacant air. Something was wrong. I could feel it in my weak bones, but my pride kept me from speaking with her. I sat there for a long time, watching her, but not once did our eyes meet. She died that night.

         "I sat on my porch the next day, watching her family, some were weeping, others looked sad, while some faces were almost devoid of emotion. I then looked at her chair with tears in my eyes and a weeping heart. I had always secretly loved her and now I will never get a chance to tell her."

My  late grandfather’s words  reverberated in my head as my gaze travelled over the contours of her beautifully sculpted body. I sighed, the old man was crazy, he probably made up the whole thing. I mean come on; love? It’s not like I believed in that stuff. So why then did the one conversation I had with  the man keep popping up in my head?

       "love is a mystery, it has the ability to take and give life, to create and destroy. Love can drive a man insane or it can open a man’s heart, mind and soul allowing him to see the world with new eyes and that’s what love did for me, it altered me completely, I’m a different man Jasam, Julie’s brief presence in my life and the happiness she allowed me to experience is something I will cherish until the day I become one with the soil of this earth. Love is a beautiful thing Jasam and it's something I pray you’ll find in life…"

Well the old man was right, love did drive him insane, all the better reason to stay away from such a hideous emotion. I tore my eyes from my best friend’s beautiful face and looked around the noisy cafeteria, focusing my attention on a couple arguing in a corner by a closed window. I tuned out the rest of the voices and zoomed in on theirs;

“What do you mean you’ve fallen for someone else?” her voice broke on the last word.

“I never wanted to hurt you, I-” the boy whispered, trying not to draw anyone’s attention. He looked around inconspicuously then added

“I’m sorry Liza”

“Idiots” I grumbled losing interest in the ‘conversation’. Hearing my almost inaudible favourite word, Tira looked up from her novel.

“ Eavesdropping again?” she asked her mouth turning up in a knowing smile.

“Might as well use up my special abilities” I answered, my words laden with sarcasm.

“Jasam…” Tira began softly resting her hand gently on my shoulder. I sighed and placed my forehead on the desk tuning out her words, I wasn’t interested in hearing another of her lectures on  my indifference towards  my abilities and the student body as a whole.

I  focused instead on the sound of the rain as it hit the roof, counting and differentiating between the sound of the individual droplets. I felt the wave of tranquility which never ceased to engulf me when it rained. I released a pent up breath and allowed my mind to drift to the time of our arrival to Range Mountain; my brothers Neil, Gabe and Sultan, my sister Analise and my parents, Lamont and Marie Rhett arrived in the glorious town of Range Mountain  three years ago after the slaughtering of my grandfather Luther Rhett II. Sultan isn’t my biological brother, he’s one of my best friends who was my sworn enemy up until the biggest war the mythical world had ever experienced since the dawn of  its existence.

The thing is, despite the human world’s adamant disbelief in the super natural, the entertaining creatures of Hollywood  do indeed exist, vampires, shape shifters, werewolves, and the like with my family-including sultan- and I falling into a unique group  of creatures with various abilities called condoloids.

My brothers Gabriel and Cornelius-Gabe and Neil for short- have the ability to move objects with their minds, my sister, Analise can become one with the air, meaning she has the gene of invisibility, my parents Marie and Lamont are a teenager’s worst nightmare, they can read minds, which is why there are no secrets in my house, Sultan has super strength  and I of course am the odd one out in the family, when  I was first conceived they referred to me as the blessed child, due to the unfortunate fact that I have more than one special ability, I can run close to the speed of light, I am abnormally strong, but not a strong as Sultan,I have the ability to teleport ,my hearing ability far surpasses that of the average person, I can hear in miles rather than just kilometers and as if I needed any of this in the first place, wouldn’t you know it, I’m walking space heater. If I get too angry I burst into flames, well thank goodness it’s something I can control now, because when I was younger we had to move sixteen times, I burnt the house down. What can I say I have a temper and now all my clothes were fireproof.

My family thinks I’m ungrateful because I hate my abilities, apparently I should give thanks that I have the ability to completely macerate a person’s bones with a simple hug. I hate the feeling of not belonging, I can’t be considered a human-for obvious reasons-, I’m not an animal, nor a blood-thirsty vampire, I’m not even a condoloid, I’m different from the only people with whom I share the same blood! What am I? it has been rumored that  I share Sven’s power, he also has a wide range of talents. That’s reassuring, I share some of the same traits of the most feared creature in the world! The leader of a group of notorious miscreants called  the righteous,who havn’t been seen in three and a half years, but is still believed to be in existence.

The members of the gang were made up originally of  21 individuals, three  shape shifters, sixteen werewolves, two vampires, one condoloid and of course Sven-undefined. This group was notorious for their lack of mercy, they traversed the world killing humans and creatures alike just for the fun of it and of course the humans blamed it on their own kind, imprisoning and massacring their innocent in an attempt to squelch the fear of the human race as a whole and regain order within their  societies, while the righteous watched in joyous triumph.

The group was now proposed to be reduced to ten members as a result of the war which ensued in Italy three and a half years ago. Luther Rhett II, My late grandfather,one of the most powerful condoloids in existence at the time had made the grave mistake of attacking a member of the righteous, a shape shifter , who had killed one of his comrades in cold blood, at the time the group had split up in search of potentially entertaining victims.

Upon learning of  his friend’s death ,my grandfather went into a quiet rage resulting in the beheading of the gang's ally. My family was residing with my grandfather when the righteous, short one member and their leader, returned  with a vengeance, due to the size of the group they found no difficulty in killing my grandfather , beheading him as he did one of their own. My family fled, it was the only thing we could do , considering the sheer size of the force, they would have slaughtered us quite easily.

After our escape they went on a rampage killing every thing in sight, this resulted in an all out war, which left thousands dead and the righteous reduced to ten members. It is still unknown to the supernatural world why  Sven was absent during such a earth- shattering event and it is still widely believed by the human community, that it was the work of  a gang of people still at large who went on a killing rampage at a time when the world was facing an economic crisis. One good thing came of that day however, Sultan, the youngest member of the group, sixteen at the time, switched sides and aided us in our escape and to ward off attackers. Of course we didn’t trust him at first but we grew to respect and love him as our own.

“ Hey bro!” Sultan greeted, with a punch on the shoulder, Emerging from my reverie I raised my head from the desk and glared at him, think of the devil and he shall appear.

“ Where you been?” I queried casually, he was seated between Tira and me and I wondered how he managed such a feat without alerting me of his presence. He shrugged, his eyes glued on Tira as she read. I sighed, Since our arrival at the university, the entire female body has been drooling at the sight of  Sultan and me, unfortunately, for them,  we were the only two boys probably in the history of the world who weren’t interested. I, because I found the human girls rather unoriginal and unnatural, what with the various powders and make-up they continuously plastered on their faces to “enhance” their beauty and Sultan because he was besotted with Tira, our only friend in this retched institution, she was also the only human- to our knowledge- who was aware of what we were.

 I  turned to look at sultan and Tira, Since the moment he saw her Sultan was ensnared, according to him, it was love at first sight -idiot- , as far as I knew, Tira seemed to be unaware of his ‘subtle’ overtures. On the other hand, it was obvious to the entire campus, so maybe she was aware but wasn’t interested or maybe she was dense, who knew, girls had been a bafflement to me since the bane of my existence, they contradicted themselves at every turn and bubbled up with conflicting emotions whenever we didn’t do what they expected of us. Females! I’ve never actually been attracted to one of these insipid creatures or even felt the need to enter into a relationship with one. Until now....

Looking past Sultan, I  stared openly at Tira once more,noticed the way her shoulder length auburn hair framed the gentle outline of her beautiful untouched face, the way the glow of the overhead   fluorescent light richocheted off her skin giving it an almost luminous glow ,her one of a kind eyes a strange shade of purple, framed by long graceful eyelashes giving her an air of mystery that had many males boiling with desire, her pert nose that dipped slightly at the end giving her that signiture look that many girls seemed to die for, my gaze  lower still and rested on her full rose pink lips that I imagined would be soft to the touch, I could almost feel them pressed against mine,igniting the flame which I had once believed to be nonexistent up on until a few weeks ago.I licked my suddenly dry lips and wondered if this was how Sultan felt when he looked at her, I  diverted my gaze and froze when they came it contact with Sultan’s icy glare. He’d obviously caught me lusting after his supposed reason for living. A lump formed in my throat.

This wasn’t the first time he’d caught me staring at her, I tried to ignore the way I felt about her , I found it hard to understand why I was so overwhelmed in her presense all of a sudden, I’d known her for more than two years and I ‘d never even thought of her in that way until two weeks ago,it was on a day like today where she sat reading, one minute I was glaring at a couple much like the one from today, the next minute I was looking at her wondering how it would be if we were  together and now I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

I turned away from Sultan’s outraged expression and got up from my seat. I watched Tira rise with her eyes still glued on the book and walk through  the cafeteria door to the only class Sultan and I didn’t have with her. I was in the process of entering my calculus class when I felt a hand on my shoulder, I didn’t have to look around to know it was Sultan-my brother for all intents and purposes- I sighed and turned to him.

“Watch yourself,” he growled and entered the room. I hated when this happened, this was the one thing that would rile Sultan, someone checking out “his girl”- and considering the fact that  I’d been caught doing something so unthinkable on multiple occasions, I was bound to face his wrath sooner or later. I mean a guy could only take so much and no more  and  what made it worse was that Sultan was already unsure of Tira’s feelings for him and so for him to also  have to deal with someone -his own brother mind you- encroaching on his territory was just too much to ask. Not that I was afraid of him but I hated it when we fought,something that had been happening a lot lately.

I sat in the empty chair beside him and whispered, “why don’t you just tell her how you feel already, its been two years! She can’t read minds you know. And besides if you don’t do it soon someone might come along and-”

“ You mean someone like you?”

“N-“ I began.

“Well you can just forget about it , she’s mine got that?” He said it with such intensity that a few heads infront of us turned in shock-Sutlan and I never fought...at school anyway- upon seeing my glare of pure unadultured hatred, they quickly turned away and resumed their mindliess chatter. I hated it when people eavesdropped on my conversations,not that I was innocent of this but that was different . I stared at the desk seething with anger, it wasn’t my fault  I felt this way for Tira.

“I’m not interested in being with Tira.” This atleast was the truth, I didn’t want to be with her , I just seemed to be attracted to her. There was a difference- obviously-.

Sultan seemed to accept my statement and sat back in his seat with a wide grin.”Good to know”. I shook my head in amazement, Sultan wasn’t one to hold a grudge. In that way we were complete opposites.

“Ok everyone, in the last lecture we…” The professor began. I looked around me, everyone seemed focused on him, then I looked at Sultan, he was on the verge of falling asleep -as usual- . I turned my attention to the teacher once more and sighed. It seemed everything was back to normal. For now atleast.

                                                                 Author's comments

< HEY GUYS SO AS YOU CAN SEE THE FIRST CHAP IS UP!!! LEMME KNOW WHAT YOU 

THINK AND TELL ME IF YOU WANT ME TO UPLOAD MORE CHAPTERS :)  THINK I'LL BE

UPLOADING ANOTHER CHAPTER ON FRIDAY (19/10/2012) AND AFTER THAT IMMA UPLOAD

2 OR THREE CHAPTERS A WEEK DEPENDING ON MY COURSE LOAD \(^_^)/  OH AND THIS IS

THE FIRST BOOK IN THE SERIES SO THERE'LL DEF ME MORE!!!! SO ENJOY! VOTE IF U

WANNA AND HAVE FUNN WITH IT! ALSO LEMME KNOW WHAT U THINK OF THE

CHARACTERS AND WHO U LIKE BEST  Also i know i have grammatical errors because i have yet to edit but  that will be adjusted as time goes by<3 <3 -DoUbLe.A